It's freezing here...

I guess I knew what I was getting in to (is that right?  I need to go back to school.. I think it's right).
But man on man, every morning it gets me again, IL is so cold!  We went to St. Louis for New Years Day, which also happens to be my mother-in-law's birthday, and it was almost 10 degrees warmer there than it is here, stupid wind.  But anyway, I'm slowly adding warmer clothes to my wardrobe, and I bundle up when I take the dogs out, they're definitely missing their 2ish mile walks though, they run around the house like crazy people.
Greg's been really into making sure our house is well insulated and we're not wasting any heat, we keep the house at a nice 63 degrees and wear lots of clothes, but I'm not complaining, I prefer to save our money than pay more bills.

Cool thing was, our gas company sent us a little package full of gizmos to use around the house to lower our energy costs.  I'm not willing to give up our nice shower head, so the low flow shower head landed WAY back in the closet.  But we have made a conscious effort to use fluorescent bulbs and Greg insulated all of our outlets/phone jacks that are on an outside wall.  I took a few pictures, unfortunately I don't have a picture of the cool foam insert they gave us, but Greg just filled the insides with an insulating foam.                                     Here's my super cute hubby at work

Greg got a little foam happy...

ta-da, we're saving money!

Happy New Year!

I can't help but be cliche, I can't believe how much has happened this year!  We've lived on a different continent, visited 5 countries, bought a house, and moved to the midwest. 

But, we're both really excited for 2010.  After a year of living quite isolated, we're finally in a place we can call home.  I never thought I'd love the midwest, but it's fantastic!  We have found a great church, and are making such great friends.  It's shocking how quickly you get used to isolation, and we both found ourselves not so willing to reach out to make friends, it's difficult to be so vulnerable.  But through God's grace we've landed amongst some of the coolest people we've met in a long time.  Although we definitely miss all of our Delaware friends!

Last night we spent New Year's Eve with 2 other couples, and it was so much fun to just be together and forge new friendships.  Plus, they both have kids and 2 cute babies make the deal way better!  And I'm not going to lie, I made some really good guacamole (I love you Pioneer Woman).

And today, we woke up early and drove to St. Louis and are hanging out for a 2nd Christmas and my mother-in-laws birthday, I love going for walks here.  It's such an "old school" feeling in a big city, and the houses are beautiful where Greg grew up. 

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great 2009, and good luck with all those resolutions, I'm not even setting a goal this year, I always seem to give up by.... January 2. 

New Projects!

Greg and I bought our house in November and are absolutely LOVING it! The couple that lived here before us remodeled the kitchen, bathroom, and living room but didn't get to the basement. When we moved in it was a shrine to the St. Louis Cardinals. It's painted red with black trim and has tin on two of the walls. It also came with a giant bar, which we didn't really have a use for.

This is a picture of part of the basement before we moved in.

We decided over Christmas that we were going to take the plunge into our first DIY project. We have plans to take down the tin, re-paint the walls green, put in new carpet, and change the trim to white.

Since I'm terrible at keeping a blog, I thought I'd challenge myself to document our project. Last night we ripped out the bar (well.. Greg did all the hard work, I carried pieces out to the trash). It was fun to see how much room we're now going to have!

Greg hard at work

Starting to remove pieces

Carrying out the top of the bar was super difficult, it weighed a ton and we had to maneuver it through our narrow stairwell

Tada! no more bar, this space is going to be home to our computer when it's finished

We're really excited to tackle this together! I've never done anything like this, and neither has Greg, so we'll see how many bumps we come across and how we handle them, but I think it's going to feel great to accomplish something that will make our house feel even more like home.

Holland and Paris

Greg and I just got home from vacation, and I seriously slept for 12 hours last night, it's amazing how worn out you get from sight-seeing, I definitely prefer those lay on the beach every day and do nothing sort of vacations. But we had a really great time. We flew to Brussels, Belgium where we were picked up from our friends at the airport and drove to Holland. We were staying with friends of ours, Charles and Tineke, who were living in Spain with us, and moved in June. It was awesome, I absolutely loved Holland, there isn't much to the landscape, it's pretty much flat, but it's covered in green and dotted with windmills. It was so beautiful, too bad we missed the tulips, but it was worth the trip anyway. While we were there we were able to visit with our friends, take long bicycle rides, we visited this place called "Madurodam" which is a park with replicas of famous Dutch buildings in miniature, and we even saw Harry Potter!!! Which of course I had been dying without, but I refused to see it dubbed in Spanish.

Riding bikes in Bergen op Zoom

We're Giants!! One of the windmills in Madurodam

Love the wooden shoe =)

Then we hopped on a train and went to Paris, this half of the trip started out quite hectic, we had no idea how the metro worked, but eventually ended up near our hotel when we realized we had no map of the streets and weren't really sure where our hotel was... so we wandered in the general direction for almost a half an hour just hoping we'd stumble upon the small side street where our hotel was, and we actually did, right when we both were about to give up and grab a taxi, we saw a small sign with labeled "Rue Nicolo". Man was it a blessing! Paris was interesting, definitely beautiful in all of the architecture and history, we went to the Louvre, had crepes in front of the Eiffel Tower, took a boat ride down the Seine River, visited the Notre Dame, but it wasn't really what I expected. In my mind Paris is a city where you sit at cafes and drink coffee with a croissant, etc. But when we discovered that a cup of coffee cost 6 euros, and no that isn't Starbucks, it blew me away! Even a soda at a restaurant was at least 5. It was crazy! The food at Disneyland was cheaper than the food in the city.... and that's sayin' something. We celebrated Greg's birthday at Disneyland Paris, we were there for 13 hours, I have a HUGE blister on my foot and Greg's favorite saying became "my dogs is doggin' me" to inform me that his feet hurt. Gotta love him =)

On the ride, "it's a small world"

Greg in front of the Eiffel Tower

Happy 4th of July... (a little late)

I hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July, full of good old American bar-b-que, sparklers, fireworks... We did our best here in Espana, but I'll tell you.. I miss s'mores. We had some old marshmellows and cookies (can you BELIEVE they have the nerve not to have graham crackers here?!). But it was a great time. Plus, it was my puppies first birthday, so I (being the total nerd that I am) baked them a cake. Only to find out later that night that my younger brother's baby was born as well! Welcome to the world Liam Michael O'Toole, and he was huge... 9lbs 15oz.

They might have been born in Spain, but they're American at heart

Roasting some marshmellows

Lots of food!

The puppies enjoying their cake

cows are so beautiful

Tineke and Charles moved home to Holland this past week, we were really sad to say goodbye, so sad that we bought plane tickets to visit them in 3 weeks! But I was able to go on one last hike with her and the kids, and it was beautiful! Cows were everywhere, close enough to touch, and they're so beautiful here, I love their caramel color. And the sun was SO bright, I've had the sunburn for a week... I can't believe I forgot to put sunscreen on my neck.

Tijn (pronounced Tine) did not want to walk... at all, this was 5 minutes into the hike.

The DeWolfs

I am so going to miss this place!

hello beautiful =)

The way Spaniards Party

This past Saturday night, Greg and I went out to a "barrio" party in Gijon. The different neighborhoods (more like miniature cities inside the city of Gijon) have fiestas during the summer. During the day they have inflatables for kids to play on and carnival games, and LOTS of food. Two of our friends live in Viesques and invited us to go out with them. So we left the puppies at home and brought towels, food, and sidra (the Asturian cider) and headed over.

(Lola hates getting left...)

At night they have big concerts and everyone stands around and dances, etc. Our Spanish teacher and a friend of hers came with us as well and was determined that we would celebrate "spanish style" so we had tortilla (a potato and egg omelette, my favorite spanish food) and chorizo a la sidra (chorizo=sausage, cooked in the cider, it was delish!) and LOTS of bread.

It was so much fun, but we knew we weren't 'in Kansas anymore'. The music began around 10pm, we left at 1am when the second band was coming on to play until 5am! As much as we're trying to fit in, I was struggling to stay awake until 11 if we're being honest...

Brian and Jodie

Cory and our Spanish teacher Cristina